Shaking Godspeed

Shaking Godspeed
Short Info

SHAKING GODSPEED
Moments of great clarity; it might come across as your typical transcendental hippy adage, but pursuing them in today’s rock music environment is actually by far not the easiest route to take. After all, hasn’t every last drop of originality forcefully been squeezed out of the once so revolutionary sounds of guitar, bass and drums?

With every authentic movement preceded by countless others, and nearly all of them later resurrected in their relative ‘retro’ waves? The possibility to take a deep breath and shape these sounds to one’s own personal, fleeting thoughts appears to be more and more of a rarity, buried under the burden of rock history, bandwagons and daily refreshed iTunes charts. For that to happen, you do need a true moment of clarity.

Welcome Back Wolf – Release in Sept. 2014
In Shaking Godspeed’s last moment of great clarity, a steady body of new material emerged. “Maximal Music” as the band describes. The esthetic, ecstatic, eclectic, energetic and sometimes downright absurd qualities of the previous work are being surpassed in this new album by far. Recorded live in the solitary confinement of an abandoned clothing factory in Nijmegen, Holland, Welcome Back Wolf bears a never before heard confidence in Shaking Godspeeds own values and feelings. We can only guess what their next moment of great clarity will bring.

Wout Kemkens (vocals & guitar):
“I think the record will fit every mood. To me good songs are basically
like human beings. Every man or woman has formed a wide range of emotions,
characteristics and behaviourisms that make up who they are. So if you want
to touch or move people, your work has to be as multi-dimensional, complex
and simple as human nature. It’s someting that we strive for in every
song.“

Moments of great clarity; it might come across as your typical transcendental hippy adage, but pursuing them in today’s rock music environment is actually by far not the easiest route to take. After all, hasn’t every last drop of originality forcefully been squeezed out of the once so revolutionary sounds of guitar, bass and drums – with every authentic movement preceded by countless others and nearly all of them later resurrected in their relative ‘retro’ waves? The possibility to take a deep breath and shape these sounds to one’s own personal, fleeting thoughts appears to be more and more of a rarity, buried under the burden of rock history, bandwagons and daily refreshed iTunes charts. For that to happen, you do need a true moment of clarity.

For Shaking Godspeed this moment arrived after a lot of others had already happened. One year after the release of their self-titled EP in 2009, the then three piece experienced a sudden burst of popularity among an audience ranging from artsy hipsters to biker gangs with their adrenaline fuelled but cleverly weird constructed debut AWE.

A national and international crusade followed which established Shaking Godspeed as a household live name as well, with all the necessary prime-time media performances, headline tours, support slots for giants like Deep Purple and Sziget and comparable festivals soon crossed of the bucket list. AWE went into the critics’ books as ‘the most interesting thing in Dutch rock music for the past decades’ and ‘standard-bearer of the new psychedelic movement’, and Shaking Godspeed was chosen by the viewers of the national Nederpopshow as band of the year 2012.

With the follow-up release of Hoera the band put their feet more firmly on international soil with a German record deal. After some more Dutch and European touring, developments came to an unexpected halt with the departure of longtime bassist and organ player Paul Diersen. Instead of quickly finding a replacement and marching on, founding members Wout Kemkens and Maarten Rischen took the chance to sit back, relax and enjoy the right to be silent for a while. A very short while that is, but just enough to shed off old skins and coming to terms with the notion that an open gaze to the future is worth more than any accomplishment, sound or hero of the past. With an exponentially growing development in any cultural or technological field nowadays, clinging on to whatever rusty old value appears to be nothing less than an insult for the human brain.

Shaking Godspeed found the only worthy musicians to immediately act upon this sudden moment of great clarity in the wonderfully gifted Alex van Damme and Rocco Ostermann, both not by any means restricted by rigid musical boundaries. Open to new forms of collaborative songwriting, very soon a steady body of new material emerged that surpasses the esthetic, ecstatic, eclectic, energetic and sometimes downright absurd qualities of the previous work by far. Recorded live in the solitary confinement of an abandoned clothing factory in Nijmegen, Holland, Welcome Back Wolf bears a never before heard confidence in Shaking Godspeeds own values and feelings. We can only guess what their next moment of great clarity will bring.

SHAKING GODSPEED
Moments of great clarity; it might come across as your typical transcendental hippy adage, but pursuing them in today’s rock music environment is actually by far not the easiest route to take. After all, hasn’t every last drop of originality forcefully been squeezed out of the once so revolutionary sounds of guitar, bass and drums?

With every authentic movement preceded by countless others, and nearly all of them later resurrected in their relative ‘retro’ waves? The possibility to take a deep breath and shape these sounds to one’s own personal, fleeting thoughts appears to be more and more of a rarity, buried under the b...